wild about chanterelles.

My love for all things mushroom hunting is not new information to any readers of this blog. It's a fortunate inconvenience that Lo and I have been too busy with life and careers to get out in the woods and do some hunting. It's especially frustrating given all of the fungus hunting successes I have been hearing about since the chanterelles started to pop. Yesterday I took some time to check out my chanterelle spot and it happily provided me with a dozen or so nice size chanterelles and one big early season chicken of the woods. Maybe it's a sign that this fall is going to be a jubilee of mushroom picking and hot cider sipping. It seemed like a good reason to celebrate with food. I called up Clancey's butcher shop in South Minneapolis and checked on their rabbit inventory. I was in luck, chanterelle rabbit sausage with basil was on the menu for the night. 

Lo was out of town so I was cooking for a friend and I didn't take down a recipe. If you are really interested let me know, I can come up with one.

I had some raddichio and endive laying around so the menu was set - Chanterelle rabbit sausage, grilled raddichio with braised endive, and grilled apricot.

I tend to enjoy apricot paired with chanterelles as I find the mushrooms have a similar scent to apricots and juxtaposed, it really brings out the fruitiness of the shrooms.

I have to say, I think the dish was a success as I designed it, but it was even better when I added a fried egg on top the next night. A good mushroom hunt supplies multiple feasts!

As a side note to the novice shroom hunter - the most imortant thing to remember while foraging for wild mushrooms is to positively ID the mushrooms before you eat them, it's VERY important.

Happy hunting and happy eating.

project food blog: sweet meat treats

Wow! We would be amiss to not thank everyone for all of the votes in challenge number three. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are all fabulous. Lo and I have seen more traffic and more comments than ever. Project Food Blog has been an amazing experience thus far.

Now, on to challenge four - a photo tutorial. We decided to guide you through the process of making sausage. We made two sausages with two original recipes for you. A classic hot Italian and something a little different...we're calling it a sweet meat treat. It's a maple syrup and cinnamon sausage with rubbed sage and thyme. Great for breakfast either simply fried, or served on a stick, deep fried in pancake batter with powdered sugar. The latter is our version of a breakfast "corn dog" (see photo below for tasty inspiration). But first things first, let's make some sausage goodness.

Applying this basic technique to any type of sausage you would like to make will reward you with success and deliciously bound meat concoctions. We'll try to keep this light on words (too late!) and let the pictures speak for themselves.

When we make sausages we like to use pork shoulder. It has a nice amount of fat, which is helpful for controlling the amount of fat that goes into your sausage. You'll want to break down your shoulder chunks into cubes suitable for grinding. Separate the fat from the lean meat and create two piles. Place the cubed, separated fat into a mixing bowl and keep it in the freezer until you are ready to start adding your fat.

Pass the leaner portions of the pork through your grinder, keeping it course.

Lay out your mise en place for your sausage. Measure and combine all of your ingredients: lean shoulder, spices, liquid and breadcrumbs.

This is the best part of sausage making by far! Thoroughly mix the ingredients together, to create your panada (a mixture used for binding meat). Don't be afraid to use your hands. Once you are happy with the mix, heat up a pan and start tasting! Make a small patty and give it a try. Be sure the sausage holds together nicely and tastes great. This is the time to add more seasonings if you feel you need them. When you are happy with your sausage flavor and consistency, you're ready to move on.

Now it's time to add the fat and to shout, "Hell yes, I'm adding the fat!" Remove your fat from the freezer. It should be almost frozen, but soft enough to pass through your grinder. If it's too frozen allow it to sit at room temperature for a few minutes. The idea behind keeping the fat cold is to uphold the integrity of the fat as it passes through the grinder. Warm fat would turn to mush, cold fat will store little nuggets of fatty goodness throughout your sausage mix. That's what you want.

Add, by mixing with your hands, some of the nearly frozen fat to your sausage mixture. We incorporated about a 1/4lb of fat per 2lbs of sausage. That ratio felt good to us, but you can always add a bit more if you like. Pass that mixture through your grinder one more time and refrigerate.

Now that your sausage mixture is done, you have a couple options. You can case them or leave it loose. We rarely case Italian sausage as we use it for different pastas and such. But if you were making brats or kishka, you'll undoubtedly want to case it. We get our casings from our local sausage shop. They are super cheap and you'll feel like a culinary super star asking your sausage shop for casings instead of asking for a half-dozen Polish! Rinse your casings out with cold water, and cut a suitable length piece for doing a generous size coil. Wet the tube of your sausage stuffing attachment and slide the casing piece completely onto the tube. All that's left is to push your refrigerated sausage mix through the grinder with the sausage stuffer attached and case 'em up. Twist into desired size links. You'll really appreciate the help of a friend if you're using the Kitchen Aid like we do. There are a variety of great tools for sausage stuffing, and if you find you enjoy making sausage links you might want to invest in something better suited to the task. We'll be doing the same very soon!

Apply the above technique to the recipes below and enjoy!

Hot Italian Sausage.

2lbs ground porkSpicy broccoli pasta with Italian Sausage

1/4lb pork fat

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 & 1/3 tablespoon kosher salt

1 egg

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1/2 tablespoon dried marjoram

1 tablespoon ground fennel

1 tablespoon sweet paprika

1/2 tablespoon hot pimenton

1 1/2 teaspoon crushed red chiles

1 tablespoon basil, finely chopped

3 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs

1/2 cup dry white wine, ie. Pinot Grigio

fresh cracked pepper, to-taste

Sweet Meat Treat.

2lbs ground pork

1/4lb pork fat

1 large shallot, finely chopped

1 eggBreakfast corn dog with powdered sugar and poached egg

1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg, fresh ground

2 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons rubbed sage

2 teaspoons cinnamon, fresh ground

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped

1/4 teaspoon white pepper, to-taste

3 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs

1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons maple syrup

--Jd & Lo--

tdf. stage 2. brussels → spa.

Three days into the tour and the race is yet to hit French soil. Brussles to Spa takes place entirely in Belgium. Look for massive crowds along the raceway as the Belgians love their cycling and I mean love. Belgium is also notorious for having excess "road furniture" - watch for bikes broken in half flying through the air when someone inevitably hits a road sign.

Aside from excess road furniture and drunken cycling fanatics in thongs lining the roadways, here are some other things I think of when I think of Belgium: Most definitely, beer and sausages.

In that spirit, we're making Saison-glazed sausages with brussel sprouts and bacon along with a potato salad served with a warm bacon vinaigrette.

Potato salad with warm bacon vinaigrette.

1 tablespoon shallot, finely chopped

1 teaspoon whole grain mustard

1 1/3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons, warm rendered bacon fat

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped

2 tablespoons dill pickles, sliced

3-4 small waxy potatoes, quartered (we used yellow and red potatoes)

Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Roast your quartered potatoes until tender but not totally soft, you want a little bite to the potato - about 20 minutes. While roasting potatoes, slowly render bacon fat over low heat. We bought 1/2 a pound of slab bacon (uncut), diced it up and slowly rendered the bacon over low heat, reserving the bacon bits itself for the brussel sprout dish we served with the salad. Once fat from the bacon is rendered and the bacon has become tender, strain bacon from fat and keep the fat warm. Add your shallots, mustard, vinegar and mustard to a mixing bowl. Whisk in bacon fat and olive oil.

When the potatoes are finished, remove from the oven and let cool. When cooled, place in a mixing bowl along with the dill, pickles and warm vinaigrette. (If you don't keep the vinaigrette warm, it will get clumpy. If it gets clumpy, just warm it a bit.) Toss and serve.

For the brussel sprouts.

10 brussel sprouts

1/2 pound slab bacon

Salt and pepper to-taste

Trim and clean your brussel sprouts, removing any outer leaves that don't look fresh. Slice the brussel sprouts as thinly as possible vertically. Dice the slab bacon into 1/4" cubes. Place the bacon into a pan over medium heat, slowly rendering the fat from the bacon. When the bacon is tender and golden remove with a slotted spoon; reserve bacon fat in a separate dish if making bacon vinaigrette. Add brussel sprouts to the same heated pan used to cook bacon. Cook until tender and a bit caramelized, about 10 minutes stirring frequently. Add rendered bacon bits and season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the sausages.

1 cooked polish sausage

1 cooked brat

1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup shallot, finely chopped

1/2 cup Saison or Belgian style beer

1 tablespoon fresh chives or parsley, chopped

Heat a pan over medium high heat, add olive oil. Place sausages in pan and cook until the outsides are slightly browned. Add shallots and cook for about two minutes. Add beer to the pan, cover and cook for about 8 minutes until the beer is evaporated. Remove lid and allow sausages to rest in the hot pan for about 3 minutes. Serve sausages with brussel sprouts and potato salad.

Enjoy!

--Jd--